


creep up on my grave

by darlingargents



Category: Ready or Not (2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Dubious Morality, F/M, Manipulation, Murder, On the Run, Road Trips, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:53:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26570959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlingargents/pseuds/darlingargents
Summary: Grace has always had a bit of a bloodlust in her.
Relationships: Alex Le Domas/Grace Le Domas, Daniel Le Domas/Grace Le Domas
Comments: 2
Kudos: 76
Collections: Darkest Night 2020





	creep up on my grave

**Author's Note:**

  * For [arbitrarily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arbitrarily/gifts).



> Massive thanks to S for working out some plot things with me, providing the inspiration for some of the best moments, and giving a quick and useful once-over in a very short timeframe. ❤️ 🧡 💛

It starts with Grace finding a working gun on her wedding night.

Except it doesn’t.

It started twenty years before that, when Grace was twelve years old and was with her third new foster family that year. She’d had to transfer to a new school, and a boy in her class wouldn’t stop pulling her pigtails. Both literally and figuratively: pulling her hair, pinching her arm, asking her for a kiss. Calling her a slut when she refused, like that made any sense at all.

He tried to follow her home from school on a wet, miserable February day. Grace took a new path down an alleyway lined with dead cars and blackened snow, stopped to dig for something in her backpack, and waited for him to grab her.

Everything slowed down when his hand wrapped around her biceps. He pulled, hard enough to bruise; her hand closed around the handle of the kitchen knife she’d been bringing to school for the last few days. She let him pull her up, spun around, and sunk the knife into his shoulder.

He let her go with a high-pitched, agonized scream. Grace smiled, and pulled out the knife. Blood was gushing down his arm and pooling on the dirty alleyway ground. A nearby snow pile had a spray of blood over it, like raspberry drizzle. She kicked him in the ankle, hard, and he collapsed on the ground like a ragdoll, limp with pain. She let him writhe for maybe a minute, and then she reached down and ended it, the knife going through his eye and straight to his brain.

It only took him a few moments to stop moving.

Grace admired her handiwork, removed the knife from his eye and wiped it with a Dairy Queen napkin and some of the cleaner snow she could find. There was bleach somewhere back at the house, she was pretty sure; this wasn’t one of the homes where everything dangerous was locked up. Clearly not, considering she had stolen a knife.

She left his body there under the weak February sun, and she never got caught.

In retrospect, maybe someone was looking out for her from the beginning.

❦ ❦ ❦

That’s not the only time it happened, but the only time of note, until Grace’s wedding night. She’s never liked these monstrous urges inside her, and one thing she loved about Alex was that she feels like a better version of herself with him. Like a version of her that would never kill.

Of course, that all goes to hell the moment the maid is shot dead in the same room she’s hiding in.

Alex’s hand is clamped over her mouth, leaving her no room to breathe or scream. The hysterics of Emilie and the irritation of the rest of the family washes over her without sinking in; all she can register is that she’s in the middle of a game of life and death. That they’re trying to kill her. And she’s not afraid.

Maybe she was meant to be here.

Alex tries to help her escape without bloodshed, but there’s only so much he can do. In a situation like this, it’s kill or be killed, and Grace made her choice already.

In the music room, the bullets on the wall aren’t real. She notices as soon as she pulls them down. She discards the gun and digs through the drawers. Clearly the rest of the family is armed; they must have left  _ something _ behind.

She strikes gold on the third drawer she checks: two Glocks, with the safety on both and a box of ammo. She loads them, checks them, and shoves one in her dress’s waist sash, keeping the other in her hand and flipping the safety off.

In the mirror, she sees herself holding the gun, the other within a moment’s reach. And she sees herself at twelve years old, growing too fast for her clothes, the knife in her hand that took her first life.

Maybe she was always meant to draw that card.

❦ ❦ ❦

Grace only knows a little about guns, really. She’s read up on them, as much as anyone fascinated with killing but not quite at the serial killing or mass murder stage would do. But she’s taken a couple lessons at a shooting range, and she’s always had a steady hand.

A double tap to the back of the butler’s head.  _ Boom-boom _ .

He hits the ground, his teakettle still screaming, and she doesn’t bother checking for a pulse, just takes the teakettle off the heat as she steps over his body and out the door.

❦ ❦ ❦

She notices, as soon as she steps outside, that the cameras are back on. She tries to stay out of their line of sight, probably unsuccessfully, as she maneuvers her way to the front of the house to wait for Alex. Once he’s out, they can run, and they won’t have to ever see his family again. At dawn, they’ll all see this was a ridiculous tradition, and everything will be okay.

It’s what she wants.

It’s what she  _ should _ want.

But watching the butler fall awoke something in her. She hasn’t felt it for a long, long time. A buzzing under her skin, faint and electric, running through her like a live wire. A rush of blood to her head when someone comes into her field of vision, her finger itching for the trigger. Images playing on repeat in her mind, of blood and gore, of a prone body on the ground, of taking someone’s life into her hands and choosing to snuff it out.

Her mind is telling her to run. The gun in her hands and the feeling in her gut want her to plant her feet and find a more intimate way of killing. A knife or sword, perhaps. She thinks Aunt Helene has an axe. Maybe something like that.

Time slips away. She hears things on occasion, shouts or running. Alex doesn’t appear.

It’s looking more and more like she’s going to have to find him. The thought doesn’t bother her as much as it probably should.

When her internal clock says it’s been maybe half an hour, she decides it’s time. “Sorry, honey,” she says as she double checks the safeties on both guns. “Heading back into the lion’s den. But I’ll eat them first. Don’t worry about it.”

❦ ❦ ❦

Grace is nothing if not bold. She’s certain Alex hasn’t simply gotten lost, so her only choice is to confront the family. The front door was unlocked when Alex opened up the house, so she simply moves out of her hiding spot and goes up the stairs. A camera blinks down at her, and she glances up at it, giving it a little wave. Either they know she’s coming, or they don’t have anyone watching because that was the butler’s job. It doesn’t matter to her.

She pulls the door, and the massive, heavy thing slides soundlessly open. Inside is quiet.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are…” she sings softly under her breath as she closes the door behind her and walks down the hallway. Not hiding, but keeping an eye out. The last thing she wants is to step into the path of that crossbow without noticing.

She’s nearing the music room when she hears a noise, and spins on her feet, ducking behind a suit of armour. Emilie is stumbling down the stairs, crying, her head in her hands. “Stop fucking up, stop fucking up, stop fucking up!” she chants to herself, and gives herself a good whack on the side of the head with the handle of her gun. “Fuck!” she screams, and tosses it down the stairs. She’s unarmed and alone.

It’s an easy choice. Grace steps out, lifts the Glock, takes aim, and shoots.

She misses.

Not entirely — she clips Emilie’s shoulder and sends her tumbling down the stairs, screaming. The gunshot is still echoing around the hallway as Grace mutters “Fuck!” under her breath and takes aim again. Emilie lands hard, and Grace walks over to see her crumpled at the foot of the stairs, blood gushing down her arm and soaking into the carpet.

Emilie is still screaming, half incoherent and half words. “She’s in here, she’s here, somebody do something!” she shrieks in between wails of pain, and Grace aims at her heart. One shot.

The sister is down. Only a few more to go.

❦ ❦ ❦

Changing course a little, Grace ascends the stairs. She can hear movement downstairs, but it sounds pretty far away, and she thinks she should probably find Alex before she does anything else.

Halfway down the upstairs hall is the bedroom she and Alex slept in last night. A time that feels like a decade ago: they’d been carefree, happy, excited. She’d gotten tipsy on wine after their long drive to the mansion, and he’d tried and failed to carry her up the stairs, only succeeding in dropping her on her ass. She’d laughed and laughed until her chest hurt, and when they’d finally made it to the room they’d kissed until Grace’s lips were numb and fallen asleep half dressed in their day clothes.

She’d assumed that tonight they would have sex. Considering it’s her wedding night. A ridiculous assumption, apparently.

She’s been staring at the door so long that she’s surprised no one has come out to shoot her yet. She’s about to shake off the nostalgia and move on when she hears something — heavy breathing and a scraping noise. Repetitive. Aggressive.

Adjusting the gun in her slippery palm, Grace slowly opens the door.

Alex is on the floor, arms above his head and handcuffed to the bed frame. He’s frantically trying to get loose, sawing at the wood with the chain of his handcuffs, his wrists red and swollen from the pressure. He stops when Grace opens the door, staring in naked shock.

“Grace?” he says, incredulous, and a shot rings out behind her.

Grace jumps and turns, firing off once or twice, not hitting anything. She backs into the room and slams the door shut, locking it with her free hand. She can hear shouting, panic, and maybe even a few cries of grief; maybe someone will miss Emilie. Who knows.

“The key is there,” Alex says, jerking his chin towards a dresser. Grace grabs the key in her non-gun hand and keeps the gun pointed at the door as she fumbles to unlock Alex.

“Is there another way out of here?” she asks as calmly as she can manage with her heart racing like she’s running a marathon. She can hear the pounding of feet in the hallway; they’ll be trying to break down the door any minute, if not shooting through it.

Probably not shooting through the door. They know Alex is in here. Emilie might have done it, trigger-happy as she was, but she’s dead.

The image flashes through Grace’s mind: her crumpled body, the blood running across the hardwood, the pool of her hair. Her glassy eyes when the second bullet hit her heart. She thinks she should be feeling some kind of regret, or guilt, but she doesn’t. It’s satisfying. She did the only thing she could, and she did it well.

The handcuffs finally click open and Alex stands up, rubbing his wrists. He grabs Grace’s hand and pulls her towards a servant’s door as someone pounds on the door Grace came through.

“Open the fuck up!” someone shouts. Alex is crying, Grace can see, as he pulls her into the hidden hallway.

They’re back where they started, almost, running through the halls. Grace hands Alex her second gun and he checks it quickly and sticks it in his pocket. She’d never know that about him, that he’s good with guns. There’s a lot you don’t learn about a person if you only date them for a few months.

Hopefully they’ll get out of this mess together and build a new life, without the secrets.

Maybe she can even tell him what she did to his sister.

❦ ❦ ❦

Alex takes her up and down through various parts of the house, and when they come out of the secret halls, it’s quiet. No one around. They’re close to a back door, and maybe a garage. They can drive out and no one else has to die.

Before they can make it to the door, a voice tells them to stop.

It’s Charity, her gun pointed at them both. Far too close to run or do anything else. Grace drops her gun, and Alex does too, a moment later.

“Come on, Alex,” she says. Her perfect hair is mussed, her lipstick smudged. She isn’t going to get through this looking perfect. None of them are. “You really think this bitch is worth your entire family?”

“It’s just a stupid tradition, okay?” Alex says. He’s sweating from the collar, dried tears on his face, his hands shaking. “We’ll be okay. We’re going to go.”

“She killed your sister. Did you know that? Double tap to the heart.”

Alex freezes, and Grace looks at him, and past him. If she runs for the exit, if she times it right…

“You did?” he whispers.

“She was going to kill me.” It’s a lie, of course it is, but it’s not like any of them will ever know. She steps in front of Alex, turning partly away from Charity, making it as intimate a moment as she can. “I had to, Alex, don’t you get that? It was me or her.”

Alex’s gaze darts between her and Charity, horrified. “Let us go, please,” he pleads, but his eyes are asking a question. Grace knows he doesn’t want the answer.

Charity looks unruffled. “You married a killer, golden boy,” she says. “She’d kill all of us just to get out of here and if she does we’ll all die anyway. She killed the butler, she killed your sister—”

“Emilie was a killer, too, she killed the goddamn maid.” Alex seems to realize what he’s saying halfway through saying it, and wilts back a little.

“Just let us go, Charity,” Grace says, stepping forward, and apparently Charity is losing patience. She shoots.

Time slows down. Charity had been aiming at Grace’s forehead, and Grace does the only thing she can in the half-breath before she dies. She ducks.

The bullet that should’ve gone through her forehead goes through Alex’s throat.

Blood sprays across the top of her head, dripping down her face, and as she ducks down, she scoops up her gun and fires at Charity, hitting her stomach. Charity screams, but holds on to her gun and shoots again, the shot going wide and hitting a tapestry. As Alex falls to the ground, Grace shoots again, and three more times, just to make sure. Charity stops moving.

There’s a split second of almost calm. Charity is dead, and when she turns to Alex, he’s on the verge of it, too. It actually makes her sad. She’d loved him, more than she ever thought she could love another person. She crawls over to him, still on the ground, still covered in his blood, and lays a hand over his heart.

Blood is running out of his throat in a steady flow, a puddle spreading slowly around his head. He can’t speak when he opens his mouth, but he raises a shaking hand to cover Grace’s, where it rests on his heart. She closes her eyes, not bothering to hold back her tears. If she needs to milk some sympathy later, it’ll be helpful.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” And she is. She is sorry that she’s going to leave him here to bleed out alone. She’s sorry that her only ally is dead — it’s going to be a lot harder to get out now.

“Y-you,” Alex starts, and she leans in close. Alex wheezes every word, the hole in his throat fluttering. “Y-you k-k-killed m-my s-s-sister.” He pushes her hand away.

Oh. Well. If he’s going to be like that about it. Her gun is still loaded, and it’s still in her hand. She checks it. Still loaded.

Unlike with any other killings, she’s not sure she’s going to take pleasure in this.

She’s working up to it — and kind of hoping Alex will bleed out before she has to do anything, but that isn’t looking likely; he’s wheezing and trying to grab at her, clinging to life with all his strength — when she hears footsteps accompanied by an unsteady whistling tune. She gets to her feet — noticing how much of her is covered in Alex’s blood: the bottom half of her dress is soaked in blood and bits of gore, and it’s still dripping down her face — and ducks out of the way, keeping the gun steady in her hand, as the footsteps and out-of-pitch whistles come nearer..

Daniel rounds the corner, and drops his glass. It shatters against the hardwood, spraying glass shards and whiskey in all directions.

“Alex,” he says, and Grace shoves the gun back in her waistband and steps out.

“Charity did this,” she says, and she sees Daniel’s horrified gaze jump from her bloodied body to Charity’s dead one on the ground behind Alex.

“Alex,” he says again, and drops to his knees by Alex’s side. He puts his hand over Alex’s slowing heart, right where Grace’s was.

The blood is still flowing, but slower. Alex is going to be dead in minutes, if not less. His mouth opens and closes, gaping like a fish, but Grace is certain he’s spoken his last.

As Daniel leans over his brother, shoulder shaking with emotion or tears or both, and Grace watches, she realizes that her escape plan — relying on a Le Domas who knows how to get out — might not be foiled after all.

“He’s going to die,” Grace says softly, and kneels beside Daniel, above Alex’s head. She strokes his hair, which is tacky with drying blood. “You should put him out of his misery.”

“What?” Daniel lifts his head and looks at her, horrified. She can’t tell if the red around his eyes is from drinking or from crying. Maybe both.

“Your wife shot him,” Grace says. “Maybe you should finish it. So he doesn’t have to suffer anymore. He took the bullet for me. Till death do us part, right? But he needs a little bit of help.”

“I can’t,” Daniel says. He’s still shaking like a wild animal. “I can’t, I can’t, I need to help him.”

“He’s dead,” Grace says, as softly as she can. Trying to put him at ease. She takes his hand on Alex’s chest and places her gun in it, wrapping his fingers around the handle. She moves slowly, and he lets her do it. “Help him.”

“I can’t,” Daniel says, more quietly this time. His eyes are frantically darting from side to side, as if looking for an escape route.

“It’s what he would’ve wanted,” Grace says, and Alex’s mouth opens and closes, no sound coming out but a wheezing gasp. On the side of him that Daniel can’t see, he tries to raise one shaking hand, and Grace leans over him to casually press his wrist back down. No hidden signals. She has Daniel right where she needs him, and she’s not going to let Alex ruin it. If Daniel kills Alex, she has him. For good.

Daniel presses the gun to Alex’s forehead. For the first time, Grace notices tears in Alex’s eyes. That makes sense. He’s probably in a lot of pain.

“Goodbye,” Grace says quietly, and leans down to kiss his cheek. Next to his ear, she whispers, “Thank you. Sorry.”

She lifts her head, and Daniel turns his head away and pulls the trigger.

One shot.

_ Boom. _

❦ ❦ ❦

Daniel finds the way out faster than Alex did. They step into a massive garage with rows of luxury cars lined up, all ready to go. Daniel inputs a code into a wall panel, and a hidden door swings open, revealing a row of keys.

Grace can’t stop looking at his hands. The hands that committed fratricide, all for her. They’re not bloody anymore — they stopped to quickly scrub off their hands and faces, though Grace can still feel bits of Alex’s blood on her hairline, itching — but Grace feels like she can almost see the blood anyway.

They’re bonded, now.

Plus, she’s pretty sure Daniel has nothing left. She needs to give him meaning. It would be cruel to just leave him after this.

Daniel plucks a key out of the row and closes the door again, and hits the unlock button. The lights of a very expensive-looking car turn on, and Daniel makes his way over. Grace follows him.

“They’ll notice the garage door opening,” Daniel says once they’re both in the car. It’s the first thing he’s said since they left Alex’s body behind. “They might get desperate.”

“That’s okay.” Grace took the gun she gave Alex off his body and left hers behind. It makes her feel confident, having it in her hand or strapped to her body. Like she can deal with anything.

“Okay.” Daniel reaches across her and presses a button on the dashboard. The glove compartment slides open, and—

“Holy shit.”

“We keep it stocked,” Daniel says, monotone.

Stocked is one word for it, Grace thinks. It’s a wad of hundred-dollar bills, tied together and sealed in a ziplock bag. When she pulls it out, she sees a credit card in the bag as well, and a piece of paper that looks like it’s listing contacts.

“So we’ll be fine,” she says.

“Yeah.” Daniel starts up the car with a quiet roar, and hits a button on the keys to open the garage door.

Grace had been a little skeptical of his claim that the family would notice, but as the door slides up, the road out is lit up by rows of lights on either side, and she can see the front of the house from here. All they’d need to do was glance out a window and see the garage and road lit up.

Daniel guns it.

It’s not a long road to the outer gate — maybe a couple of minutes — but Grace’s heart is pounding as they drive. If they’re surrounded in the wrong place, the car won’t protect them for long.

When they reach the gate, Daniel gets out to open it. Grace gets out of the car as well and looks around, trying to keep her hand steady as she clutches the gun.

Daniel is fiddling with the gate for so long that she’s almost certain they’re going to be jumped, when he finally steps back and the giant wrought-iron gate slides soundlessly open. Grace gets back in the car, locks the door, and looks up.

Someone is running across the lawn. They’re not far from the front of the house, really — the route from the garage is somewhat roundabout — and they’re gaining. Fast.

As the person gets closer, Grace can make out an axe. Great. Just great.

“Drive, drive,” she says, as Daniel fumbles with his seatbelt. She suddenly remembers just how many drinks he’s had tonight. Shit. She should’ve taken the wheel.

Daniel guns it when Aunt Helene is maybe a football field away. Grace watches her in the rearview mirror as she gets smaller and smaller and—

Explodes.

Grace jerks in her seat. Daniel glances at her.

“What?”

There was a person there. She turns in the seat to look back. There’s nothing that she can see as the darkness swallows up everything behind them.

Skin crawling, Grace turns back around. Suddenly, the idea that all of this is real — that they were trying to kill her for something not entirely insane — feels a little more plausible.

❦ ❦ ❦

The sun is creeping over the horizon when Daniel pulls into the parking lot of a motel. In the daylight, he looks like a goddamn mess. Blood on his white shirt under his jacket, a bit still on his face, every part of him looking like he just crawled out of the worst party of all time.

Actually, that’s not entirely untrue.

He’s still the one who’s going in, because Grace is in a blood-soaked wedding dress. She’s finally taken her hair down, at least, but the dress is a monstrosity she can’t change out of yet.

Daniel is gone for so long that Grace is almost worried that she’s been abandoned, but he only took a few of the hundred bills, so she has to assume he’s at least coming back for the rest. After half an hour or so, he finally comes back, and after checking that the coast is clear, Grace grabs the money and follows him to their ground-level room.

“I got clothes,” he says once they’re inside. “Not great, but they’re something.” He hands her a pile of fabric, and Grace unfolds it. A pair of shorts with giant pink tropical flowers, a pair of boxers — definitely intended for children, going by the size and design — with a pattern of various emojis, and an eye-searing blue touristy t-shirt reading SUNNY CALIFORNIA in white letters on top of a smiling sun.

“We’re on the other side of the country,” Grace manages. It’s the most she can say about it.

“It was what they had,” Daniel says, deadpan, and Grace laughs. Daniel doesn’t quite smile, but she can see it in his eyes, just a little. “I also got this,” Daniel adds, and hands her a pair of scissors. Bathroom scissors, tiny, but still something. “For your dress.”

“Can you help?” Grace asks, and she’s not entirely sure, but she thinks Daniel blushes, just a little.

In the bathroom, Grace leans against the counter and Daniel starts cutting open her dress from the back. There are buttons somewhere on there, and some hooks, but the whole dress is soaked in blood by now. Finding them would be next to impossible, and it’s not like she’s going to use the dress again.

So Daniel cuts her out of her dress, and she finally steps out of it a couple minutes later. The pattern of blood on her bare skin is strange, and she’s looking at it for a few moments before she realizes that Daniel hasn’t moved.

He’s just looking at her. She’s just in a lingerie set, a white one that Alex bought for her on their first and last Valentine’s day together. The bra is flimsy, her nipples visible through the half-transparent fabric, and there’s a bloodstain on the right side, trickles of blood running down her breast and collecting at the bandline. The underwear is mostly fine. Only a few splatters.

She’s also still wearing her wedding ring, glued to her skin and its sparkle dulled down by the dried blood coating her hands.

Grace swallows, painfully aware of the heavy weight of his gaze . Part of her is saying that she should use this, that Daniel will be more useful to her if he’s getting some. The other part just wants him. No strings. Nothing. Just him.

She turns around again and unhooks the bra, dropping it on the counter next to her fresh pile of clothes. After a moment of consideration, she leaves the ring, too. “I’m taking the shower,” she says, and before she can stop herself, she adds, “You can join, if you want.”

She doesn’t look behind her again, just drops her underwear and leans into the shower to turn it on. The water pressure is weak, and the shower itself is an unpleasant shade of yellow with a stained plastic curtain. There’s two tiny bottles on the side of the tub, with a bar of soap barely bigger than two of Grace’s fingers. It’s a far cry from the luxury of the Le Domas mansion.

When she steps inside, she leaves the curtain open, and a moment later, she feels Daniel stepping in behind her. She can feel the warmth of his body, and when she turns around, she can see all of him. The fine coating of dark hair on his chest, his arms, his legs. The bloodstains. The alcohol on his breath and his bloodshot eyes.

Grace kisses him as the shower spray soaks into her hair and rinses Alex’s blood down her body and the drain, some of it down her face.

She can taste Alex’s blood in their mouths.

❦ ❦ ❦

They don’t have sex. There’s a lot of reasons, probably — the danger of their situation, sadness, Daniel being so drunk he probably wouldn’t be able to get it up — but mainly the exhaustion. As soon as Grace is out of the shower, her hair as clean as she could get it and her body rinsed of blood, she dresses in the California shirt and the emoji boxers — which fit, surprisingly — and collapses in the closest bed. There’s two beds, but Daniel gets in the same one, in just his boxers.

If she were thinking strategically, she thinks this would be a good time to kiss him again, maybe give him a handjob. Show him why he should stay on her side. But she’s far too tired, and she passes out before she can give the idea more than a passing thought.

When she wakes up, he’s still asleep. It’s the middle of the afternoon, going by the clock on the bedside table, and every part of her hurts. She hasn’t eaten since seven or so last night. Her body was running on pure adrenaline, and now it’s crashed.

She swipes a hundred out of the bag, pulls on the shorts and her converse (hoping no one else will notice the blood splatters) and takes a room key. At the front desk, she breaks the hundred, and buys up snacks with probably half of it in the convenience store next door.

As she’s paying, she happens to look up at the muted TV playing the news, and her eyes fixate on the words Le Domas.

The subtitles roll past.  _ The Le Domas family mansion burned down early this morning, police are saying. Several bodies have been found, and though they have not been identified, it can be assumed that they are members of the Le Domas family, owners of the Le Domas games company and several local investments. _

The news cuts to commercial, and Grace is frozen in place, holding a giant box of microwave burritos, two six-packs of gatorade, and as much sugar as she could perch on top. 

The cashier waves his hand in front of her face, impatient, and Grace slaps down three twenties and leaves as fast as she can.

Daniel is still asleep, but she pulls the curtains open and turns on the TV anyway. He sits up, blinking, as she flips through to find local news.

“What…” he groans, and then she lands on it, a different local station showing helicopter footage. The mansion is still burning, giant plumes of smoke furling up to the sky.

“We’ve been finding strange things,” a policeman says as the camera cuts to an interview. “We found a battle-axe in the woods surrounded by what almost looked like liquified human remains, and inside we’re finding similar… liquified bodies. A few bodies are in a state to be identified, and we’ll be looking at those—”

Grace turns the TV off.

“We can’t go back,” she says before Daniel can speak. “They’ll know we killed them. As far as they know, we set the fire, too. We need to keep running.”

“What?” Daniel blinks at her, still looking half-asleep and fairly upset. Grace can’t blame him.

“They’ll throw us in jail, okay? So we need to keep going.”

She can practically see the wheels turning in Daniel’s head. She starts to prepare other arguments, trying to figure out what she needs to say, and she’s about to pull out Alex’s death — a low blow, certainly, but she’s more than a little desperate — when Daniel nods.

“We can do it,” he says. “We’ll figure it out.”

Grace grins, and before she can think it through, she kisses him again. And again.

❦ ❦ ❦

The itch comes back a week later.

They’ve identified the bodies that they could. Alex, Charity, Emilie, the butler, and two of the maids. “These bodies did not appear to die a natural death,” the county police commissioner says in a press release. “We are asking anyone with information to please contact us.”

They keep running. A new motel every night. Grace cuts off her hair and dyes it dark brown, buys clothes that are a little more subtle. Daniel stays by her side. He has nowhere else to go. They’re bonded together now.

They ditch the car on day three, and buy a new one in cash. Four days later, an hour or two after Grace felt her fingers twitch with the urge to kill as she drove through the infinite wooded highways, it breaks down on the side of the road.

“That’s what you get for $200, I guess,” Grace says as Daniel opens up the hood of the car and she glances at the engine. “We’re not going to get it running again.”

“Hitchhiking?” Daniel asks, hesitant. She’s pretty sure that a rich boy like him has never slummed it like this before.

Grace has, though. She waits on the side of the road, her backpack that now contains all of her worldly possessions slung over her back, and holds out her thumb until finally a white van pulls over. Windowless. No company listed.

Very bad implications. Grace gestures for Daniel to take the back, and gets in the passenger seat. She puts the backpack on her lap and casually slides a hand inside, around the handle of her Glock. She’s not sure quite how many bullets it has left, but she’s sure it’s enough.

The driver is creepy, to say the least. The initial impression had been bad; by the end of the first hour, Grace is absolutely certain he intends to kill them. He turns down a dirt road at some point, and she catches Daniel’s eye in the mirror. Shakes her head.  _ Don’t say anything. _

After fifteen minutes on the dirt road, the driver pulls off into a clearing, and reaches past Grace into the glovebox. She has a moment to judge his poor placement before he’s sticking a gun in her face and telling her to get out.

“Gladly,” Grace says, and gets out, clicking the safety off of the gun as she slams the door to mask the sound. Daniel gets out as well, and they both walk to the middle of the clearing.

“Drop your things,” the driver says, gesturing with his gun. He’s sweating bullets, dark dots of perspiration running down to soak into his collar. The top of his bald head gleams in the sunlight.

“Yeah,” Grace says, and drops her bag.

One shot to the chest. He screams, stumbling back, blood gushing down his front, and before he falls, Grace aims for his head. Fires.

Hits.

He’s dead before he hits the ground. The itch in Grace’s hands goes quiet.

“Oh,” Daniel says, numb. Grace clicks the safety back on, shoves the gun back in her bag and grabs Daniel’s hand, squeezing it twice.

“Let’s go,” she says, walking over to the body to pluck the keys out of his pocket. After a moment’s consideration, she slides his phone out of his pocket, and smashes it between her heel and a rock on the ground.

She has a feeling this won’t be the last time they kill together. Or at least kind of together.

Maybe next time she can get Daniel to help.

“I’ll drive,” she says, and Daniel gets in the passenger seat without complaint.

Once she’s in the driver’s seat, she leans across the van to kiss him, and to her surprise, she can feel him smiling into her mouth. She hasn’t seen him smile since they left together. It’s not much, but it’s something.

“Let’s go,” Daniel says, and Grace starts to drive.

She’s got him right where she needs him. Everything is going perfectly, as much as it can. It makes her optimistic about their future together.

Maybe someday she’ll even tell him what really happened with Alex.

❦


End file.
